It was not a song coming to them from without--not a melody, but a kind of
chant, hummed first in a low sonorous tone, and then rising and falling in
weird undulations. The night was still, and the trees at the window gave
forth a sound like the monotonous s-sh of rain. The chant continued for
about a minute. While it lasted Mrs. Detlor sat motionless and her hands
lay lightly on the shoulders of the young girl. Hagar dropped his foot on
the floor at marching intervals--by instinct he had caught at the meaning
of the sounds. When the voice had finished, Mrs. Detlor raised her head
toward the window with a quick, pretty way she had, her eyes much shaded
by the long lashes. Her lips were parted in the smile which had made both
men and women call her merry, amiable and fascinating.
"You don't know what it is, of course," she said, looking round, as though
the occurrence had been ordinary. "It is a chant hummed by the negro
woodcutters of Louisiana as they tramp homeward in the evening. It is
pretty, isn't it?"
"It's a rum thing," said one they called the Prince, though Alpheus
Richmond was the name by which his godmother knew him. "But who's the
gentleman behind the scenes--in the greenroom?"
As he said this he looked--or tried to look--knowingly at Mrs.
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